


decorum (and other things that suck)

by GalaxyGhosty



Category: Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe, Fluff, Introspection, M/M, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-16
Updated: 2019-04-16
Packaged: 2020-01-14 20:42:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,741
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18483979
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GalaxyGhosty/pseuds/GalaxyGhosty
Summary: AU. So somewhere in the middle of everything dull in his life, grey monotony and shades of black, Jack had stepped in and created something vibrant.





	decorum (and other things that suck)

**Author's Note:**

> boy howdy it's been a while
> 
> hello hello!!! i know it's been ages since i wrote something for y'all. this is actually a piece i started waaaaaay back in January after hanging out with the lovely PoemIsDead--i talked to her about my love of those AUs where it was all boring until someone came in, and that slow progression of change. it's a really adorable concept and i'm happy to play around with it when i can! 
> 
> my absence has been a combination of a lot of things--some stuff i may address in little Trickshot shorts, but basically i have a lot of new personal things happening (both good and bad) and it's just been so hard to write! but i finally managed to get the rest of this going and completed and i have plans for a short pwp before i delve back into writing _stars_. thanks so much everyone for sticking with me!! it really means so much.
> 
> i hope you enjoy this silly little piece! i may come back to it someday, but for now, i think it's a complete little entry.
> 
> enjoy!

Dark didn’t think about interior decorum.

Dark didn’t think much about anything that wasn’t work, that wasn’t ordering around the employees at the office, that wasn’t setting people straight, that wasn’t making an example out of people who did him dirty, or even people who looked at him wrong. No, Dark had a very one-track mind at times, and in a lot of ways, it was better. No unnecessary complications. No fear of letting guests come into a well-decorated house. No fear of anyone expecting anything of him. None of it.

To say that his life is illustrated in blacks, whites, and greys is an understatement. Dark can’t remember the last time he had a splash of color anywhere in his life, living in some sort of monotonous landscape of an old noir black-and-white film. He often felt like a character, playing the role of the obnoxious employer to the lead protagonist, and that was honestly just fine with him. Why change what was already true? Dark enjoys the monotony of it all, enjoys the blandness, because simplicity is far more elegant than obnoxiousness.

And he meant that, truly. He still does, in some capacity. There are few joys in this world that he takes pleasure in, and his simplicity is one of them.

The other just so happens to be the goddamn most colorful person in the world. 

Jack McLoughlin. Beautiful, terrorizing, absolutely _shameless_ Jack McLoughlin, with his vibrant blue eyes, pale skin, goofy smile and hair so goddamn green Dark would’ve thought he was straight out of a Halloween shop. Elegance is his exact antonym--possessing two measures of volume: loud and louder. He touches the things he shouldn’t, fights and shouts when he believes in something, and in every way imaginable, he’s the worst. 

But he’s also the love of Dark’s life. Ew. 

They had started out so strange. Jack is the head of the design team for a company they’d been working with, and he had gone over to conference with Dark after the original woman, someone he’s known of for some time, Amy, fell ill and had to cancel. When Jack had shown up, he had showed immediate disgust in Dark’s demeanor, and felt no qualms about pointing such a thing out. 

Dark had thought he was absolutely insane. He still stands by that. At first, he’d been _furious_ with the little monster, going so far as to have a screaming match with him in front of the whole team. It had been a nasty sort of fight, one that didn’t end on the best of terms, and Jack had vowed _never_ to work with his company again if _this_ was the way he would treat him.

“I’m so sorry I’ve been sending Amy to deal with your crusty ass,” Jack had spat, furiously gathering his papers up. “When you get that stick out of your ass, then you can talk to me. But until then, I don’t want to hear the barest _mention_ of your name.” 

While Jack didn’t _technically_ have that authority, he was still a valued member of the company, and Dark was sure that there was an actual threat behind those words. Jack’s boss, an equally as terrifying man by the name of Nathan, trusted Jack implicitly. Nathan had dodged Dark’s calls and emails for weeks before Dark finally caved. 

He, to this day, still isn’t sure how to apologize. He’s never really had to. Everyone has just understood that he’s an absolute fucking asshole, and he relishes in it, and has never expected anything else from him. The first apology had been a bouquet of flowers, an impersonal note with some sort of drivel on it. Dark had figured that would be enough to placate the absolute spitfire, but instead, the flowers had been sent back with all of the heads cut off. 

_Try again, asshole._

The note had read in reply.

Dark remembers laughing, somehow, at the bold display of utter fucking deviancy. Never in the world had anyone ever talked to him like that, and in some ways, it was refreshing. To not be so feared. 

He could destroy Jack, he had thought. He could break him down and reduce him to nothing, and Jack would not flinch.

Perhaps that’s where the interest had started. 

The next time Dark tried an apology, it had been in person. Different flowers, because apparently the first set hadn’t suited him. There were so many whispers about the building as he approached, and when Amy happened to lay eyes on him as she was entering the elevator, she had a smile on her lips. 

“Third floor,” she had told him with a wink, holding the doors for him. She pressed the number for the second. “His office is at the far end of the room. Small, glassy. Can’t miss it.” 

“Presumptuous,” Dark had remarked, but couldn’t help but be amused. He’d always liked Amy. It really happened to be a shame she was shacked up with some ineloquent voice actor with an ego that rivals the sun. “Perhaps they’re for you.”

“I actually don’t care much for lilies,” Amy had mused. “But Jack likes them.”

And at the second floor, Amy skipped out, giving him a little two finger salute before disappearing. 

The rest of the procedure had gone smoothly. He’d shown up at Jack’s office, and Jack, bent over his desk working on something or another, hadn’t even noticed him at first. 

“A formal apology,” Dark had announced, his lips tilting up when Jack had jumped. “For my behavior.”

“I’m like,” Jack had said, “actually stunned. Who told you I liked lilies?”

“A lucky guess.” 

“Lucky indeed,” Jack had grinned. “Thank you for your apology.” 

He had said nothing more. Dark had stared at him, confused. “That’s it?”

“What, you thought bringing me flowers was gonna make up for your shit?” Jack had laughed. “Try again, dude. Learn to woo a guy, you know?”

Perhaps at that moment, it had been the challenge in Jack’s eyes, the flicker of something deeper, sharper hidden within those irises, that had Dark saying, before he even considered it, “Dinner, then. Eight?” 

And he thinks if nothing else, the way that Jack’s fingers curled around the bouquet, the tangible taste of something sweet in the back of his throat as he said, “Pick me up. Don’t be late,” had been perfect. 

Jack McLoughlin is and will always be a spitfire. But at some point, he’d become Dark’s little spitfire, pushing him in every way imaginable until someday Dark had just accepted he would never quite understand him. And yet he was all the more brilliant for it. 

So somewhere in the middle of everything dull in his life, grey monotony and shades of black, Jack had stepped in and created something vibrant. 

After having dinner together, Dark memorized the exact ways that Jack’s pretty blue eyes lit up, the way his eyes creased at the corners and his mouth of slightly crooked teeth, and that should’ve been his first clue that he’d fall for this boy. But Dark, though he’s not a stupid man, had been pretty blind to that little detail--love was a weird word, anyway. It was a weird feeling that didn’t quite fit in his mouth, but it was the only legitimate word that could describe the sensation of Jack’s hands touching his face, the gentle, subtle flutter in his chest, where he hasn’t felt anything other than boiling fury in years. 

He’s dramatic, like that. Sometimes life is like that.

The first time they kiss is not long after that first dinner, because Jack’s irresistible in that weird, radiating energy of his--holding himself open to Dark’s advances when he, like everyone else, should have been terrified. Dark’s no stranger to the rumors that circle him--he’s been called every name under the sun, most of them bad, and Jack cannot, for all his obliviousness, be blind to such a thing. It would not be the first, or the last time, someone feared him for who he was, the eclectic and wholly frightening Damien Doom. And yet, the boy wore his heart on his sleeve, pressing it carefully into Dark’s fingers like a precious gemstone with only a prayer lighting up his eyes, hoping Dark would not drop it.

He never would. And though this conversation had never actually happened, verbally at any rate, it still existed, the answer having been their lips meeting pressing a gentle hand to Jack’s waist as he wound his fingers in Dark’s hair, like he’d been waiting all fucking night for him to work up the energy.

(He had.)

Life for him would never be sunshines and rainbows. There’s a reason Dark has earned and kept the nickname Dark, but in some ways, things got a bit brighter. He and Jack had never quite talked about his terrible taste in drab colors, but at some point Jack started leaving his things everywhere he went, painting the bedroom with his graphic tees and sweatpants and bright colored pajama bottoms, leaving him cute colored sticky notes in the mornings that Dark couldn’t bring himself to crumple up and throw away. They rest in a neat little stack by his laptop, inside of the drawer, and though Jack never brings it up, he knows they’re there. It’s one of those things that’s blissfully simple, but so part of his routine that Dark actually kind of hates it.

(Not really.)

For all the life he has had, and still has left in him, Dark has never met a better person. There is nothing in this world that can rival the sun, beautiful and bright and breathing new life such as he. And though Dark may resent the change in his life at times, he never resents him. 

Nothing’s been the same since he came, and nothing will ever be the same again. There is a life before Jack McLoughlin, and he has no intentions of a life _after_ Jack McLoughlin. He only has plans for a life _with_ Jack McLoughlin, for the rest of time. Anything that tries to disrupt that particular plan will meet a very unhappy Damien Doom, and that’s typically not a pretty sight.

Nothing’s been the same since Jack came, and nothing will ever be the same again, yet Dark finds in the monotony of his old life, that he really doesn’t seem to mind.

**Author's Note:**

> comments and kudos are always appreciated!! thank you so so much!!
> 
>  
> 
> [bother me on tumblr. ](http://voidskelly.tumblr.com/)  
> [buy me a coffee. ](https://ko-fi.com/A234MZ4)


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